Local site sells fashion statement about rape

That’s what it says on T-shirts for sale on the Seattle-based Web site Scarleteen.com. The shirts – pale pink depicting an open safe and a tiny, almost illegible note-card bearing those three words – are going for $25 via the sex-ed site.

Promoters are hoping the shirts will help break the don’t-talk-about-it stigma sometimes felt by rape victims, and maybe help with the healing process.

Scarleteen.com operator Heather Corinna survived rape as a young girl, and she wrote in an e-mail earlier today that she wears the T-shirt because “anything and everything we can do to break that silence is critically important.

“If any woman around me had voiced that she was raped – with her voice or with something like this shirt – I think that as a girl, my road to becoming a survivor might have been a lot less rocky and felt a lot less terrifying and shameful,” she wrote.

The T-shirt got some play in a New York Times article today, mostly focusing on Brooklyn-based activist Jennifer Baumgardner, who designed the shirt.

“So many people who’ve been raped tend to doubt the experience,” Baumgardner said in the article. “I do think it’s often empowering for women and men to own that experience and divest themselves of some of the shame and secrecy of it — and realize that they’re not the ones that should be ashamed,” she said.

Baumgardner speaks at college campuses often, and she’s planning on distributing the shirts at those events, according to the story.

The activist stirred up some controversy in the past when she designed and promoted a shirt featuring the words: “I had an abortion.”

April is Sexual Assault Awareness month, and many college campuses in the area are planning “Take Back the Night” events, as well as protests and education campaigns. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network estimates that one in six women will be sexually assaulted during the course of their lives, and that college-age women are four times more likely to be sexually assaulted.